NEW YORK—Election-night fever is heating up, and I hope the party I’m giving on the evening of Nov. 3 will not end in fisticuffs. All my guests except one are Trump haters, so my dinner looks a bit like the Last Supper in reverse. Never mind. Many who pretend to know are predicting a Biden landslide, including yours truly, so at least I’ll have a reason to drown my troubles in very good Frog red, and serve my guests ordinary Dago white.
Yippee! Even without a pandemic and Trump’s misstatements, it would take a miracle for The Donald to win in view of the Goebbels-like attacks against him by what is supposedly neutral news. Never before have the media been so open in cosseting Biden and protecting him, while discrediting everything that Trump has accomplished. The president is openly blamed for the unemployed when even children know that Trump had lowered unemployment to its lowest level in sixty years. Smug TV pundits and columnists hammer away each day and night on the evils of Trump: “The horror never ends, replaying 2016 in an endless loop with doses of fear, stress and loathing,” was a New York Times headline written by a hysterical woman this week. The Biden scandals have been covered up and described by a lone conservative writer as “the opposite of a feeding frenzy.” Hunter Biden’s sleazy business affairs have a lid on them imposed by the liberal powers that rule the media, Big Tech, and the entertainment industry. Better yet, the press and TV media work hard to discredit any story that doesn’t toe the anti-Trump line. I’ve worked as a journalist under the strict censorship of the Greek colonels (it suited me fine then), but this is much worse. Every TV show is redolent with anti-Trump jokes and stories, every news hour filled with anti-Trump venom. I’ve never experienced anything like this. Perhaps during Mao’s cultural revolution of the ’60s, but I had better things to do back then.
What is just as bad is the Big Tech bias against The Donald. Each and every day over the past four years, Twitter and Facebook have brimmed with anti-Trump stories based on anonymous sources. Not that I read them because I don’t use social media, but I have sources who do. If the deck isn’t stacked against Trump on those two platforms—newscasts, rather—my name is Adolf Hitler. Silicon Valley has effectively silenced the right, its billionaires having made a devil’s bargain with the media: We’ll play your game and stay left, and you’ll forget that we’re news networks but pretend that we’re platforms. The biggest whopper of them all, the Russia–Trump connection, was invented by a Brit sleaze but perpetuated for three long years by social media and never blocked as totally false news.
Okay, Trump has made a fool of himself along the way, but he has delivered enough not to deserve the anti-Don hate, the venom and vitriol that Twitter permits to spew daily. Worse, both Facebook and Twitter censor anti-Biden stories and never bothered to fact-check the Russian collusion bull. Trump’s campaign has also run out of moola. That’s not surprising in view of the bad publicity he’s getting via social media. According to one report, almost 95 percent of donations from employees working at Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Oracle went to Biden. Twitter execs, however, are the most anti-Trump of all. They have openly admitted that “the buffoon must be defeated,” and one top manager called people who had voted for him “hysterically fucking stupid people.” Nice.
Degenerate New York Times columnists are proposing Orwellian tribunals in a post-Trump period in order that 2016 never happens again. The self-appointed guardians of democracy have ignored the vandalism and burning of cities—read Douglas Murray in last week’s Speccie—and one Times columnist clown, Kristof, even demanded, “Help me find Trump’s anarchists in Portland.” The refusal of the media to condemn Antifa and the looting and burning has emboldened a new criminal class of anarchists. The media’s decision to turn into a propaganda tool against Trump is something I never thought possible in America. And yet it has happened, and I will never take an American journalist or writer seriously ever again.
But as always, something good emerges from the rubble: A New Yorker magazine and CNN star writer, a big lefty by the name of Jeffrey Toobin, who writes pompous articles on the illegality of Trump, was caught masturbating in full Zoom glory during an editorial meeting of the New Yorker staff. Once a respected organ, The New Yorker under a dentist’s woke son and social climber par excellence, David Remnick, has turned into a lefty tool devoid of the slenderest hint of objective reporting. What amazed me was the fact that Toobin was wanking while looking at two very homely female writers during the editorial meeting. I thought only Hollywood weirdos did that sort of thing. Now I find out it’s a typical New Yorker/CNN star writer who does it. Toobin had some lefties defend him, and he’s only been suspended, but just imagine the media’s reaction if someone of my political persuasion were caught masturbating during an editorial Zoom meeting. Luckily I have always preferred the fairer sex to wanking, but then people like Toobin and lefties of his ilk are different from you and I.
Everyone knows what to do about the COVID epidemic—except, of course, those who happen to be in charge. They are floundering like a fish newly landed on the deck of a boat. But if you go down to your local bar or pub, you will learn exactly what ought to be done, and people who a few short—or is it long?—months ago would not have known that epidemiology existed, let along what it was, have their solutions ready at hand. Their only problem is that the boneheaded authorities won’t listen to them. Time for another beer!
Of course, in certain countries, those medical research institutes otherwise known as pubs and bars have been closed down, victims of that bane of government life, the need to do something, or rather, the need to be seen to be doing something. Just as justice has to be seen to be done, so does policy. Whether the closing of pubs and bars has a positive, negative, or no effect on the progress, or perhaps I should say progression, of the epidemic will probably never be known, for there are in such a situation so many variables that it is difficult to isolate one from all the others. But at least a government that has closed the pubs and bars, whether totally or from some arbitrarily designated time in the evening, cannot be accused of inaction. If I were in power, I daresay I should be tempted to do something.
Speaking as the average man in the pub or bar, I have my own scheme. I cannot help but notice that the risk of death from COVID by age resembles very closely the risk of death by age from all causes: That is to say, at a low age the risk is negligible, rising slightly and then very rapidly after the age of 65—though there is no age at which the risk is zero.
In the age group to which I have the honor of belonging (though membership of it is not entirely voluntary), which is said to be at high risk of dying of COVID, though only a sixteenth as high as that of people over the age of 90, I noticed that in Britain, which had one of the highest levels of death from the disease, the chance of someone of my age dying of it during the height of the epidemic was 1 in 807. The normal risk, that is to say without COVID, would have been about 1 in 1,200. This is not the Black Death, then, though I suppose the death rate might have been much higher had it not been for the government measures taken.
Between a fifth and a sixth of the population is aged 65 or older, and it is this group that is overwhelmingly the most at risk of dying of COVID.
As a pub or bar epidemiologist, it seems to me that preventive efforts ought to be directed overwhelmingly at this age group, which is, alas, my own. My favored scheme would be for the rest of the population to go about its business as normal, with the over-65s remaining as much as possible indoors, taking precautions and not mixing with younger persons except with great circumspection. The degree of risk they were prepared to run would be up to them; there is no objectively “correct” level of risk to run.
For example, a friend of my age, in good general health like me, is much more cautious than I. He has scarcely left his house since the epidemic began. I, on the other hand, have been more outgoing, though still taking the precautions that I consider reasonable. As a consequence, he is less likely to contract the disease than I; but I consider the extra risk worth taking while he does not. Neither of us is “correct” in any indubitable sense.
I have noticed that older people, on the whole, already take precautions more seriously than the young who know that they have nothing to fear and in any case are risk-takers by nature. Of course, there are older people who cannot take care of themselves, either through physical or mental incapacity, but it surely should not beyond the wit of man, or even of governments, to devise a means of protecting them. Home deliveries of food by shops and supermarkets, for example, could be concentrated upon them.
In essence, then, my scheme would be to do nothing except for the incapacitated, and rely on the common sense of those at risk to conduct themselves sensibly. The economy would not receive another crushing blow.
As with all schemes that one devises, it is necessary to think of the objections to it.
The first is that we do not yet know what the long-term effects of infection with COVID are. They might yet prove to be serious. It was long suspected that the disease called encephalitis lethargica, or von Economo’s disease, which caused 5 million people worldwide to become severely Parkinsonian, was a long-term effect of the Spanish flu, though this is now doubted. But I think that we cannot allow our policy to be decided by the mere possibility of severe long-term effects.
More seriously to be considered is the possibility that people will not behave responsibly and that, unless they be restricted, the spread of the disease will be so rapid that it will soon overwhelm the capacity of hospitals to treat seriously ill patients. The improvement in speed of recovery and in survival, thanks to recent advances in treatment, may not offset the increase in the number of cases.
A thought now occurs to me: My willingness to take risks might be altered if I knew that I had to pay for treatment myself in the event of falling ill as a result of my risk-taking. The same, presumably, would apply to other people. But this is a useless thought, because in no conceivable modern dispensation would the costs of medical care fall fully and solely upon him who needed it.
How does one measure the risk of increased death, principally among the old, against damage to the economy? Could any leader dare to say, “For the sake of the economy, and of the return to normal life for the great majority, we should be prepared to accept not only the risk of some extra death, but some extra death itself”?
I am glad that I have to make no decisions other than for myself. Probably others are equally glad that I do not have to make decisions for them.
Theodore Dalrymple’s latest book is Embargo and Other Stories, Mirabeau Press.
The Kremlin’s secret magic wand to fix elections, or so the sore-loser version of the story goes, resulted in Donald Trump’s victory four years ago. Strangely, though, this magic wand didn’t seem to work in the Russian municipal and regional elections that took place last month, which delivered a body blow to United Russia, Vladimir Putin’s legislative rubber stamp. So maybe, just maybe, the crybabies have incorrectly diagnosed the reason for Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016 and ought to revise their potential excuses if 2020 doesn’t go their way.
The truth is that Trump did not actually win anything that Hillary Clinton did not already lose in a classic display of hubris, arrogance, and elitism that prompts chronic overuse of the facepalm emoji by gobsmacked political consultants like me. Meanwhile, Trump’s team made astute gambles, led by the now-withdrawn Kellyanne Conway, who is in reality a far more astute pollster than the contorted logic of her televised defenses of the president would ever suggest. She saw a chance to flip Wisconsin and put it in the red column for the first time since 1984, and Trump obliged. They doubled down with success—with 22 of 72 counties switching columns.
Instead of confronting this reality and laying the groundwork to reverse the forty-point rightward swing from Obama’s performance in parts of the Midwest, Democrats spent the past four years obsessing over the president’s tweets that even his daughter Ivanka evidently finds unhinged. They ignored the best political advice ever offered—not by Winston Churchill or Nelson Mandela, but by Michael Corleone: “Never hate your enemies; it affects your judgment.”
As for the claim of Russian “hacking,” only the looniest corners of the leftist fantasies entertain the notion that Russia actually manipulated voting machines at American polling stations. The term “hacking” is an ominous descriptor to excuse the idiocy of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta surrendering his password to a phishing scam, even after consulting with the campaign’s IT specialists. Again, where’s that facepalm emoji?
Yes, Russia has decades’ worth of experience in counterintelligence, which it uses to its advantage abroad. (Here’s a dirty little secret: The United States is not always a benevolent impartial observer of foreign elections either.) But these tools do not automatically bend the world to the Kremlin’s desires. Even in its own backyard of post–Iron Curtain states, Russia struggles to assert its influence because the parties and candidates who win elections usually do not align with Russian objectives so easily.
Russia has barely a prayer in countries like Czechia or Slovakia. The former Yugoslavian republics are either E.U. members or on track to become so. In the Baltic states, pro-Russian parties do not manage to win majorities. In Bulgaria, perhaps the most Russophile country in Southeastern Europe, the Kremlin’s preferred candidate in the last presidential election barely exceeded 10% of the vote. Even Belarus, home of the last European President-for-Life still standing, has begun to slip from Moscow’s orbit, as the ongoing protests demonstrate.
This wave has now crossed the Volga River and has impacted even domestic Russian politics. In the September voting, Putin’s party has lost almost 35% versus its previous performance. Especially in bellwethers like the Siberian city of Tomsk, United Russia took a shellacking. Much of this reversal of fortune can be attributed to anemic turnout, meaning that ordinary Russians seem less and less inclined to give Putin a blank check. If he can start to lose ground in the hinterland of Russia, his international ambitions become even harder to achieve.
Ironically, Kremlin mouthpieces will dismiss United Russia’s poor performance as evidence of Western “hacking” of Russian elections. But votes, whether in Wisconsin, Siberia, or a future Mars colony, are not allocated by foreign or interplanetary conspiracies; they are earned by disciplined adherence to a well-crafted strategy. No fake-news generator or phishing scam can undermine the kind of tenacity and focus that successful candidates and parties demonstrate to gain the confidence of voters.
Upstart Russian parties, along with many other fresh-faced political successes in Europe, have taken that lesson to heart. Trump’s chances for reelection ride heavily on how well Joe Biden does the same. Time will tell if the pathetic “blame Putin” playbook will get another reading.
I’m not at liberty to reveal my sources, but I have obtained a draft of President Joe Biden’s inaugural address. (Trump, unfortunately, won’t be there to hear it. He will be holding a competing rally at RFK Stadium, also starting at 12 noon on Jan. 20.)
** ** **
*** EXCLUSIVE CONTENT! MUST CREDIT COULTER! ***
Ladies and gentlemen, members of the fairer sex, the unfair sex, the transgenders, queers, what have you.
Women and gentlemen!
I’ve known women — my wife, my sister — no, that’s my wife! I mean my wife over here. The fat one.
I mean: The fact is, they switched on me!
Anyway, standing here today on the steps of the capitol of Wilmington — I should say, standing here today on the steps of the Capitol in the state of Washington, as we do every year, we have this peaceful transfer of power — I should say, every four years.
Which is a Big F—ing Deal! I used to say that to Barack all the time.
I see him out there! He’s the articulate, bright and clean one.
As I was coming over here on this brisk June day, I started thinking, why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go to a university? My ancestors, Welsh coal miners, would come up after 12 hours underground and play cricket for hours. Were they not smart? Were they not strong, mate?
And so, as I look out at this wonderful crowd — what’s that from the fella in the back? You say I’m not Welsh and my father was a Chevrolet dealer in Wilmington?
Listen, you lying dog-faced pony soldier — I have a much higher I.Q. than you do! I went to law school on a full academic scholarship and ended up in the top half of my class. I got three degrees in college and was voted the “outstanding student” in the political science department.
What I mean to say is that it was a financial scholarship, I wasn’t voted the “outstanding student,” and I was only in the top half of the bottom 10 students.
No, I haven’t taken an I.Q. test. Why the hell would I take a test? Come on, man. That is like saying you — did you take a test whether you’re taking cocaine or not? What do you think? Are you a junkie?
Look, folks, kids today have advantages I didn’t have. Their parents play the radio, make sure they have the record player on at night. My parents couldn’t play the record player. They were in the mines.
And I remember my pop, a Chevrolet dealer in Wilmington, telling me in 1962, as I was going off to work at an African American swimming pool — we called them “African Americans” back then — and we saw two guys kissing each other. He said to me: “Joey, they love each other.”
I shouldn’t say it. I’m going to say something I probably shouldn’t say …
Anyway, today, I stand before you to announce my candidacy for president of the United States!
Wait — I won! That’s a Big F—ing Deal, as I used to say to Barack.
Oh look! Here’s the guy from Burisma! Good to see you, man! Look, the Biden administration will be monitoring Kiev prosecutors like you’ve never seen before. Clean government in Ukraine will be the No. 1 priority of my administration. When I’m president, this country won’t be cozying up to the totalitarian regimes of Poland and Hungary. It’s gonna stop with us.
I shouldn’t say it. I’m going to say something I probably shouldn’t say …
Anyway, on this crisp September day, I vow to you we’ll not only have a Green New Deal, but a Purple New Deal, a Yellow New Deal, a LBGTQXYZ New Deal — a whole rainbow of New Deals!
You have my word as a Biden, folks.
Anyway, as I stand here in the rotunda — I mean the steps of the Capitol — just as the great Democratic president Franklin Delano … uh, I should say, as FDR did — well, he wasn’t standing because he couldn’t stand.
And to all of you in wheelchairs, you don’t need to stand either! Oh, God love you! What am I talking about? I’ll tell you what, we’re making everybody else stand up, though. Let’s give the wheelchair-bound a big round of applause!
Look folks, as FDR said, we hold these truths to be self-evident … You bet and corn pop. Pop goes the weasel! And I’m your pop, as I always say to Hunter. I’m your pop, but I’m not a weasel, pal.
As we celebrate this peaceful transition — oh, I see Adam Schiff out in the crowd! As I always say, he reminds me of my son, Hunter.
Whoa — I almost forgot, let’s give a big hand to my vice president … Anita Hill!
What am I talking about? Anita ain’t black!
Everybody give a big hand to my vice president … Cardi B!
Oh sorry, buddy — my vice president, Al Sharpton!
But I promise you, Cardi and Anita and Al and Stacey and Jesse will all have positions in my Cabinet.
That’s cabinet, not cabin, folks. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and, as she always said: “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” I know this because I got three degrees in college and was voted the “outstanding student” in the political science department.
I should say, I wasn’t actually voted the “outstanding student,” but it was an honor just to be nominated.
Anyway, I never served with John F. Kennedy — but he was no Dan Quayle! He said, “Ask your country to do things for you. Ask or not! The choice is yours.”
I’m pro-choice, although I’m personally opposed. But the important thing is, it’s your choice!
And so as I stand here today, asking for your vote — hold on! — you gave me your vote! That’s why I’m here, man!
This is a Big F—ing Deal, as I used to always say to Barack. Good night and God bless. Wear a mask!
With the conventional wisdom increasingly prejudiced and extremist on the question of who are the Good Guys and who are the Bad Guys, how much longer can we expect the federal government to collect and publish objective crime statistics by race? After all, nothing undermines The Narrative more than official numbers about who are the real victims.
Would a Biden administration make it harder for citizens to access data on crimes committed by blacks versus whites?
This may sound paranoid, but there is precedent. Back during the Bush administration, the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics posted homicide count graphs online in convenient HTML format that made them easy to cite in online debates. Under the Obama administration, however, that was deep-sixed and only the much more awkward PDF format remained. PDFs are fine for people like me willing to read thirty-page reports to find one key data point, but they are pretty useless for informing the general public.
As it is, virtually nobody knows the contents of these PDFs, and even fewer dare mention them in public despite the crucial perspective they shed on this year’s anti-police and antiwhite propaganda. With Philadelphia now being looted to defend the black man’s inalienable right to resist arrest, it might be useful to clue the public in to these official numbers.
People on the left assume that if The Science ever reported anything politically incorrect, the respectable media would have already informed them of that fact. And people on the right assume that all social science studies support the left, because that’s what the left keeps telling them.
In reality, however, the degree to which social science research vindicates deplorable stereotypes is shocking to all but the best-informed, as a glance at the newly released National Criminal Victimization Survey results for 2019 demonstrates.
I pointed out recently that the other main set of annual crime data, the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting from local law enforcement, shows that the old stereotype of blacks being extraordinarily homicide-prone is not only true but getting worse. The per capita ratio of known black murder offenders to nonblack murder offenders of all other races grew from 7.9 in 2018 to 8.2 in 2019, an even larger imbalance than male vs. female killers. And this ratio is likely to be even more atrocious in 2020 due to all the black shootings ever since the media declared the Racial Reckoning in late May.
But, many would object, aren’t FBI crime statistics, which are based on who is charged with a crime, just a giant conspiracy by law enforcement to make blacks look bad?
Well, that criticism was made way back in the liberal 1960s as well. (Indeed, just about every current critique of crime data imaginable was taken seriously back in the ’60s and looked into at length.)
So, since 1972 the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (which sounds like where Batman’s nerdy cousin would work) have been teaming up on the annual National Crime Victimization Survey. In 2019, 249,000 people in 155,000 different households were asked whether they had been a crime victim over the previous six months.
The NCVS has certain advantages over the FBI crime statistics collected by the police.
For example, while about 30 percent of local police departments still use the obsolete Adam 12-era ethnic categories in which whites and Hispanics were lumped together as “Caucasians,” the NCVS uses 21st-century designations so we can distinguish among different nonblack groups.
Moreover, asking people if they were victims of crime can get around problems with asking police departments, which might have different policies for collecting data on minor crimes and might have highly different rates of likelihood that local residents will bother to report crimes.
One downside of the NCVS, though, is that victims of murder, the most serious crime, aren’t around anymore to answer questions. In contrast, the FBI’s murder statistics are fairly reliable because a dead body demands attention.
On the other hand, many lesser crimes are not reported to the police. Whites in 2019 said that they reported 37 percent of their violent victimizations to the police versus about 49 percent among other races. So the NCVS may do a better job of covering lesser crimes than murder than do the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting.
Another issue with the NCVS is of course that it relies on unverified responses. That’s a fundamental aspect of the methodology. Also, the initial interviews are conducted of all members of a household over 11, so it’s assumed that some cases of domestic violence are swept under the rug by interviewees. Moreover, the NCVS only interviews in homes, not in jails and homeless encampments. And hardcore criminals probably seldom agree to be interviewed.
While the NCVS data is hardly foolproof, it’s an important complement to other crime statistics.
Of particular interest are its interracial crime stats. The Bureau of Justice Statistics’ 2018 report even broke out Asians, a group often ignored in crime rates.
While the NCVS’ sample size is enormous, almost a quarter of a million individuals last year, the number saying they were the victim of a serious violent crime is a little under one-half of a percent, so the number of victims is limited. This makes cross-tabs for smaller groups somewhat erratic from year to year. Therefore, it’s best to average over a couple of years.
You might think from listening to the media that blacks are rightly terrified of being attacked by whites. But the actual numbers tell a very different story.
In 2019 white respondents reported that blacks committed a nationally projected 473,000 violent criminal incidents against them, while blacks reported that whites attacked them 90,000 times. Hence, the black-on-white ratio of total violent incidents was 5.3 times that of the white-on-black ratio last year. (See Tables 15–17.)
In contrast, in 2018, whites reported a similar nationally projected total of 548,000 attacks by blacks, while blacks reported a notably lower 60,000 attacks by whites, for a ratio of 9.2.
Whites probably didn’t suddenly become 50 percent more violent toward blacks from 2018 to 2019. More plausibly, the denominators are sensitive to fluctuations due to limited numbers of black participants.
But of course there are fewer blacks than whites in U.S., so the totals don’t give the full picture of the threat posed by the average white or black individual.
Measured on a per capita basis, the ratio of black-on-white to white-on-black crimes is much worse. Non-Hispanic whites made up 61.9 percent of the over-11 population versus 12.1 percent being non-Hispanic blacks: Whites are a little over five times as numerous as blacks. Thus, in 2019’s stats, an individual black was almost 27 times as likely to do criminal violence to a white as vice versa.
And in 2018’s estimates, individual blacks were about 48 times more likely to assault whites than the opposite.
So don’t take any one year’s ratios as indisputable truth. They are just guesstimates. Still, whether the per capita racial ratio is 27 or 48 is less crucial than that, whatever the long-term number precisely is, it explains an awful lot about 2020’s often-asked question of why blacks get hassled by the cops more than do other races.
Black vs. Hispanic data are erratic due to the smaller samples, with blacks being per capita 3.6 times in 2018 and 8.2 times in 2019 times more likely to attack a Latino than vice versa.
Hispanics vs. whites are a little more stable (due to the large number of white respondents), with Hispanics being between 7.5 and 9.7 times per capita as likely to assault whites as the other way around.
In 2018’s Table 14, the BJS broke out the black vs. Asian offending rates. According to inadequate sample sizes, blacks aggressed against Asians 50,000 times vs. a little over 500 times that Asians attacked blacks, for an 89 to 1 racial ratio of total incidents. Because there are almost twice as many blacks as Asians, on a per capita footing that would be 46 to 1.
In 2019, the feds dealt with their problem of black vs. Asian statistics by no longer breaking out Asians in their Table 15 of offender vs. victim counts.
What does the future hold for this trove of impolitic data? Maybe rather than delete crime statistics outright, a Biden administration would merely append a warning saying: “If your race gets violently victimized by blacks a lot, that just proves you need to reflect very, very hard upon why you folks had it coming.”
With seven days to go until the election, there’s no way a weekly columnist can keep up with the rapid-fire developments that’ll surely be cracklin’ like a burning log on Fox and CNN as we speak. So I’m not even gonna try.
Instead, let’s talk about movies. And maybe I’ll stumble into something relevant along the way.
Once more, the right has been “Schaeffered.” That’s an old term I just coined for a venerable but rarely discussed conservative-targeting hustle. Francis Schaeffer is a legendary figure among religious rightists. An author, pastor, theologian, and lecturer, the late Schaeffer was as responsible as anyone for the explosion of conservative Christian political activism in the 1970s and ’80s. If you’re into that kind of stuff, you’ll know who he was. If you’re not, or if you’re a millennial, just know that he was a big deal.
Schaeffer’s son Franky helped his dad convert dusty old sermons and lectures into dynamic VHS video presentations back when the notion of “direct to video” was still novel. Little Franky soon got all experimental with his productions, adding “new wave” animation, puppetry, music, and screwball comedy to his dad’s work. Because little Franky had a dream. He was a man on a mission to persuade conservatives to start doing their own films…to use the media, and the talent in their ranks, to counter the immoral leftist trash spewing from “Hollyweird” (I’d have also accepted “Commiewood”). Don’t be afraid of popular culture; take it over! Master it! Use the medium to change the nation!
Franky was saying those things back when Andrew Breitbart, who’d later adopt that message as his own, was still in middle school.
The junior Schaeffer had a lineage that gave him credibility, but movies require money. And surely conservatives would be willing to ante up for a big Christian-values blockbuster film that would tell an action-packed story within a framework of biblical truths and patriotic ideals. Franky swore to make that film, and the true believers wrote the checks.
This would be the right’s Star Wars! Start baking the victory pies, Edna—the culture war’s as good as won.
In autumn 1986, Franky debuted his film to the suckers…I mean true believers who supported it. And the pious did gaze upon the film, and they did see that it was a steaming pile of crap.
Franky had pulled a fast one. He’d written and directed Wired to Kill, an excremental Mad Max rip-off in which good future teens battle evil future teens in a dystopic America. Heads are blown off, balls are crushed, asses are pierced, women are raped, mulleted hunks have their legs blown off, and black drug dealers are immolated.
But it’s not as good as it sounds. It really is a very bad film, with zero Christian or conservative values.
Oh, the fun the L.A. Times had in mocking the dumb(founded) Christian conservatives who attended the film’s premiere. “FLOCK’S FLAK FLAILS FLICK” read the Nov. 30, 1986, all-caps headline. The article described how acolytes of the father felt betrayed by the son, who’d “used” his dad’s Christian followers to deliver up a “depraved” product none of them wanted anything to do with. “I feel betrayed,” said one of the poor dumb bastards who’d been among the film’s patrons.
For his part, Franky defended his movie as biblical because “the story of King David is violent.” Schaeffer’s publicist told the Times that the theme of the film is “fighting back” and “using guns” and isn’t that what conservatives should want? Of course, every Hollywood action film involves good guys shooting guns at bad guys, so by that standard, all action movies are “conservative.” But Schaeffer added that in his film, an old lady says a prayer to Jesus before being murdered. So case closed, it’s Christian cinema.
I remember reading that Times piece in ’86 and saying to myself, “Well, at least those rubes’ll never get tricked by that scam again!”
Yeah, right. Now who’s the idiot?
In the years since Wired to Kill, conservatives have been Schaeffered again and again and again (though never again by Franky, who eventually publicly declared himself an atheist leftist). Just last month I detailed the endless stream of “let’s use the popular culture to spread conservative values” scams that rightists have fallen for. “Let’s make a movie! Let’s start a TV network! We just need a lil’ start-up cash. So pitch in, patriots!”
When Andrew Breitbart got everyone on the right to mindlessly mouth the phrase “Politics is downstream from culture,” he failed to warn his followers about the Schaeffer scam (perhaps because some in Breitbart’s circle were running it themselves). And since Andrew’s death, it’s become sacrilege to question the “downstream” cliché. Of course it’s true, which is why of course we can’t stop chasing the dream no matter how many times we get conned.
The most recent example of a Schaeffering reached its tragicomic climax a few months ago. Rebeller was a company that was launched with much fanfare last year to produce films that “Hollywood is afraid to make”; movies that push back against leftist dogma, movies that cater to conservatives. Movies that’ll send righteous content “downstream.” One of the monkeys hired to fling Rebeller’s poo was NeverTrumper and self-described “person of the right” Sonny Bunch (of The Bulwark). Rebeller’s parent company Cinestate was headed by “populist” Texan entrepreneur Dallas Sonnier, who birthed Rebeller to (in the words of The Wall Street Journal) “make movies in the Trump era for the audience Hollywood ignored.”
Lots of money was raised from well-heeled rightists (including an unnamed “Texas oil heiress”), and conservative fingers were crossed. This time, all that cash would lead to something good!
Ah, the faith of a child; bless your hearts. But sadly, Cinestate and Rebeller folded this summer due to “rape of a minor” allegations, and the one “conservative” movie they completed before the implosion, Run Hide Fight (currently screening at festivals), is literally Wired to Kill for 2020. Evil white teen shooters invade a plucky young girl’s high school, so she has to fight back using guns, and…that’s it. But her dad’s a down-home deer hunter, so that makes the film conservative.
It’s the story line of Corey Haim’s Demolition High, with a deer-hunting dad thrown in as a lure for Hannity viewers.
You boobs got taken again.
There’s a not-insignificant difference this time, though. With Wired to Kill, mainstream critics just laughed it off. They could dismiss it as a bad film, and nothing more. But today’s left has sunk to such depths of insanity, “mainstream” reviewers of Run Hide Fight have bought into the “it’s a right-wing film” hoax because their perspectives are so skewed. Variety panned the film not because it’s bad (which I’ve heard it is), but because the lead girl uses guns to fight back, and her dad hunts deer! Standard film tropes that wouldn’t have registered as “right wing” even five years ago are Hitlerian today (the Variety review is a thing of beauty; the critic condemns the film for daring to suggest that teens should fight back if confronted by a school shooter).
So the hucksters on the right and the dimwits on the left feed off each other, seeing the same invisible clothes on the naked emperor because it profits one side financially and the other ideologically. And all the while, guess what? Nothing “flows downstream.”
And nothing will. Because if I may dare commit the ultimate blasphemy, Andrew Breitbart was wrong. Look where we are now—a week away from an election in which the right’s best-case scenario is to retain a president who is at most vaguely and lethargically committed to furthering a rightist agenda, and a Senate majority that’s even less ideologically reliable. We all know that the election is more about holding off the left for another four years than it is about continuing a right-wing “revolution.” And if you examine every way in which the left is kicking the right’s ass—Big Tech information control, George Soros’ funding of local politics, policy-blocking lawsuits by well-funded legal institutions with an endless supply of litigious ground troops, judicial activism, redistricting, voter fraud schemes, “moles” within the president’s administration, organized riots and unrest, and demographic change via mass immigration, “amnesty,” and work visas—not a single damn one of them is centered around or dependent upon leftist “entertainment,” and every damn one of them would still exist and be just as effective even if the left didn’t have a single actor, director, producer, or singer in its pocket.
Downstream from culture, my ass. A thousand “pro-America movies” wouldn’t equal the influence of Soros’ shriveled left nut. The “downstream” myth is nothing more than a handy way to deflect responsibility from people who are not doing their jobs—the “conservative” politicians, donors, and consultants who could be scoring victories, but instead enrich themselves on kickbacks or spend lavishly on quixotic vanity projects.
Remember, I was there, in the thick of it, during the prime years of Friends of Abe, as Hollywood conservatives had their egos stroked (“you can change the culture and the country!”) by the likes of John Boehner, Paul Ryan, Michael Steele, Marco Rubio, Karl Rove, and all the others who had actual power and influence. “Your movies can save this country,” said the congressman as he gave Big Tech immunity in exchange for massive payoffs…said the senator as he profiteered from cheap imported labor…said the consultant as he skimmed money from the campaign fund…said the donor as he backed the high-profile black Republican in the unwinnable House race but gave nothing to the law-and-order DA up against a Soros-funded opponent.
What a strikingly good strategy, what a masterful con: The “culture” people are told that they’re the ones who need to do the heavy lifting…by the people whose actual job is to do the heavy lifting.
Behold the “downstream delusion.”
Fuckin’ Breitbart.
Mind you, the delusion exists on the left, too, in the tiny minds of cretins like the aforementioned Variety reviewer, who likely thought he was striking a huge blow against evil by panning a trite and unimportant film. Every leftist who’s tried to cancel an “N-word” joke thinks that what they do matters in the big picture. But the actual power brokers on the left understand that what needs to be censored is always nonfiction: Biden emails, race and crime stats, officer-involved shooting stats, “unfavorable” COVID studies, etc.
Your all-American flags ’n’ morality movies don’t scare them in the least. Facts scare them, not fiction. Long after vital truth portals like AmRen, VDARE, and this site have been thoroughly eradicated, gullible conservatives will still cling to the notion that all will be well if they can just make that film to change the culture.
And they’ll get Schaeffered, again and again. Because the only thing waiting downstream is a bunch of hucksters hovering over the sewer outfall to collect the dough that gullible conservatives have flushed.
If Joe Biden loses on Nov. 3, public interest in whether his son Hunter exploited the family name to rake in millions of dollars from foreign donors will likely fade away.
It will not matter, and no one will care.
But if Joe Biden wins the presidency, a prediction: By the Ides of March 2021, there will be an independent counsel or special prosecutor named to investigate the Biden family fortunes and how they were amassed.
Why is such an investigation a near certainty in a Biden era?
First, there is a 50-year tradition in America of an antagonistic media and political enemies pulling down presidents they oppose.
Watergate was the prototype — a political bugging of the sort that J. Edgar Hoover used to do as a courtesy for presidents.
Yet, the petty crime and White House cover-up was blown up by a hostile Congress, media and special prosecutor’s office to bring down a president who had just won 49 states and 60% of the nation.
In 1984, Ronald Reagan won a 49-state landslide. But when he lost the Senate in 1986, Washington, D.C., sought to break his presidency and bring him down for sending aid to anti-Communist Contras in Nicaragua. Reagan narrowly escaped to go on and win the Cold War for the West.
An investigation by an independent counsel of President Bill Clinton’s Arkansas land deal metastasized into a sex scandal about which the president perjured himself. This led to his impeachment by a Republican House.
Even before he became president, Donald Trump was the target of an FBI probe. That evolved into the Mueller investigation, which took years to conclude that Trump hadn’t colluded with Vladimir Putin in the 2016 election.
Yet, serious damage was done to Trump’s presidency. And despite the failure of the Mueller investigation to find a smoking gun, Nancy Pelosi’s House impeached the president for a phone call in which he suggested to the president of Ukraine that he might cooperate in a U.S. investigation of what Joe and Hunter Biden were up to in his country.
So it is that America has become a country where if you lose the presidential election, the fallback position is to impeach the victor.
The Third Worldization of American politics is well-advanced.
Yet, the cliche remains true: Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
And Hunter Biden’s business and investment career is like a California wildfire where the smoke can be seen in Colorado.
Consider. While Vice President Joe Biden was President Obama’s point man on cleaning up corruption in Ukraine, son Hunter, with zero experience in the oil and gas industry, was suddenly offered a seat on the board of Burisma Holdings, a corrupt gas company in Ukraine, at $83,000 a month.
In 2013, Hunter accompanied his father to Beijing.
During his stay, Hunter apparently peeled off to arrange for $1.5 billion in Chinese funds to be transferred to an investment fund in which he was an advisor. So claims Trump.
According to a Senate report, in 2014, the widow of the mayor of Moscow transferred $3.5 million to an investment company started by Hunter Biden. Hunter’s lawyer denies it.
Comes now word that Hunter was in business with a Chinese company in 2017 and may have taken in $5 million, while stiffing his partner Tony Bobulinski.
Bobulinski, a former naval officer, claims that Hunter sought to leverage the Biden family name, and that he, Hunter and Joe Biden’s brother Jim were involved in a project to raise cash from the Chinese. Moreover, the former vice president was a silent partner, the “big guy” in the operation whose name was never to be mentioned.
Bobulinski said he met with Joe Biden for an hour to discuss it.
The Biden campaign calls this Russian misinformation.
Bottom line, says Joe Biden:
I have never received a dollar in foreign money. I never used my office or influence to advance my son’s business with foreign entities. I never spoke to my son about any of his dealings in Ukraine, Russia, China or anywhere else.
Major media are either denouncing the allegations as unproven or ignoring the story, the motive for which is apparent. Journalistic duty be damned. We have to get rid of Trump. And anything that jeopardizes that highest of goals should be buried until after Election Day.
However, if Joe Biden is elected, the incentive to cover for him and for Hunter vanishes. The old journalistic enthusiasm for the hunt to bring down another president will reappear, and more information will come spilling out.
And as the claims and counterclaims, and allegations and counterallegations collide, pressure will build for Biden’s Department of Justice to bring in an independent counsel to investigate and separate what is true from what is false and what is unethical from what is criminal.
If Biden wins, son Hunter is going to have an exciting spring.
There is mounting evidence that Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden was involved in the family influence-peddling racket, including with China. Tony Bobulinski, a former business partner of Hunter Biden, confirmed in a statement Wednesday night that Joe Biden was in on a lucrative business deal between the Biden family and a Chinese Communist energy firm. The Bobulinski statement reads in part:
I am the CEO of Sinohawk Holdings which was a partnership between the Chinese operating through CEFC/Chairman Ye and the Biden family. I was brought into the company to be the CEO by James Gilliar and Hunter Biden. The reference to “the Big Guy” in the much publicized May 13, 2017 email is in fact a reference to Joe Biden. The other “JB” referenced in that email is Jim Biden, Joe’s brother.
Hunter Biden called his dad “the Big Guy” or “my Chairman,” and frequently referenced asking him for his sign-off or advice on various potential deals that we were discussing. I’ve seen Vice President Biden saying he never talked to Hunter about his business. I’ve seen firsthand that that’s not true, because it wasn’t just Hunter’s business, they said they were putting the Biden family name and its legacy on the line.
I realized the Chinese were not really focused on a healthy financial [return on investment]. They were looking at this as a political or influence investment….
The Biden family aggressively leveraged the Biden family name to make millions of dollars from foreign entities even though some were from communist controlled China.
Nevertheless, the liberal media and the Democrats have largely ignored the story.
Not to say that it hasn’t afforded occasions for their characteristic paranoia about Russian interference.
“The origins of this whole smear are from the Kremlin and the president is only too happy to have Kremlin help in trying to amplify it,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said on CNN.
Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe issued a rebuke: “Hunter Biden’s laptop is not part of some Russian disinformation campaign, and I think it’s clear the American people know that,” Ratcliffe said during an appearance on Fox Business’ Mornings With Maria.
“It’s funny that some of the people that complained the most about intelligence being politicized are the ones politicizing intelligence and unfortunately in this case, it is Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, who as you pointed out on Friday said that the intelligence community believes that Hunter Biden’s laptop and e-mails on it are part of some Russian disinformation campaign,” Ratcliffe said.
“Let me be clear, the intelligence community doesn’t believe that because there is no intelligence that supports that and we shared no intelligence with Chairman Schiff or any other member of Congress that Hunter Biden’s laptop is part of some Russian disinformation campaign. It’s simply not true,” Ratcliffe continued.
“This is exactly what I said would stop when I became the director of national intelligence, and that’s people using the intelligence community to leverage some political narrative,” the DNI added. “And in this case, apparently Chairman Schiff wants anything against his preferred political candidate to be deemed as not real and is using, or attempting to use, the intelligence community to say, ‘There’s nothing to see here.’”
Members of the Biden family allegedly had a specific system for distributing the money they earned through influence peddling; according to a text on Hunter Biden’s hard drive, members of the Biden family were expected to give half of their profits to “pop”—a.k.a. Joe Biden. “I love you all but I don’t receive any respect, and that’s fine, I guess,” Hunter wrote to Joe Biden’s granddaughter Naomi Biden. “Works for you, apparently. I hope you all can do what I did and pay for everything for this entire family for thirty years. It’s really hard, but don’t worry, unlike pop, I won’t make you give me half your salary.”
A text message from May of 2017 obtained by the Federalist shows a Hunter Biden business partner warning Tony Bobulinski not to use “Joe’s” name in communications unless they are “face to face.”
“I know you know that, but they are paranoid,” James Gilliar said in the text.
It goes without saying that if the Trump family were faced with such allegations, the liberal media would not hesitate to cover them.
The story of the Biden family’s corruption did get a mention in a weekly newsletter from the public editor at National Public Radio: “Carolyn Abbott writes: Someone please explain why NPR has apparently not reported on the Joe Biden, Hunter Biden story in the last week or so that Joe did know about Hunter’s business connections in Europe that Joe had previously denied having knowledge?”
“We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions,” NPR managing editor for news Terence Samuel told me. “And quite frankly, that’s where we ended up, this was…a politically driven event and we decided to treat it that way.”
Like Schiff, NPR apparently finds that anything negative concerning their preferred political candidate can easily be dismissed or attributed to political partisanship. So it is with the current left, the party of lies and delusions for which Biden is such a fitting leader.
“Joe Biden’s a crook—has been for years, and why are you so surprised?” asked Rudy Giuliani on a recent podcast. “The man starts off by plagiarizing in law school. Cheats his way through law school, plagiarizes the first time he runs for Senate. Is it possible he’s a fundamentally dishonest man? Well, it turns out he is.”
The Week’s Most Thunderous, Plunderous, and Blunderous Headlines
RAPPER KARENS HIMSELF
In Mexico, it’s quite common for members of the drug cartels to either sing songs about their crimes, or commission professional musicians to write and record songs about their crimes. Those ditties, called “narcocorridos” (drug ballads), are essentially musical confessions, and in any civilized nation, they’d be treated as such by law enforcement. But narcocorridos flourish south of the border because broadly speaking there are only two types of Mexican cop: on the take and in league with the bad guys, or upright and scared shitless of being killed by the bad guys.
Neither type has any desire to haul in the cartel members and use their ballads against them.
But here in the U.S., even in the face of George Soros’ best efforts to prevent it, criminals sometimes still get arrested and prosecuted. So boasting about your crimes in song is not always advisable. That’s a lesson learned too late by an L.A. rapper named Fontrell Antonio Baines. Baines, who “performs” under the name Nuke Bizzle, was busted last week for scamming a whopping $1.2 million from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (hey, that spells CARES! That means it has to be a good program), which was signed by President Trump in March. Bizzle applied for and received 92 phony Employment Development Department (“EDD”) electronic benefit payment debit cards, because if Trump had put any strings on getting EDD cards (as in, not being able to apply for 92 of them under false IDs), he’d have risked losing a few black votes, and we all know that it’s the black vote and the black vote alone that’ll secure reelection on the 3rd.
It’s actually startling how easily Bizzle was able to work the system. His scam set off no alarm bells (alarms bells having been long ago eliminated for being racist). He got the money, no problem. And he would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for that meddling…Nuke Bizzle.
See, Bizzle recorded a rap called “EDD,” in which he bragged about scamming the government for phony EDD cards. And he shot a video for it, in which he re-created scamming the government for phony EDD cards. And he played the song on Instagram as he filmed himself scamming the government for phony EDD cards.
And when LAPD detectives searched Bizzle’s home, they found that he’d scammed the government for phony EDD cards. What are the odds?
Nuke Bizzle was literally his own George Zimmerman, tattling on himself like some gossipy neighborhood busybody.
On the bright side, Bizzle is in good company. He joins an esteemed corps of rappers who gave away their own game, including C-Murder (arrested for murder), Pimp C (arrested for pimp-slappin’ a bitch), Bobby Shmurda (arrested for conspiracy to commit murda), and J-Dee of Da Lench Mob (who “lenched” a man for hornin’ in on his girlfriend).
The good news is, it’s highly likely that thousands of less musically inclined prospective ghetto Trump voters have been able to retain their scammed EDD winnings because they knew to keep their fool mouths shut.
SWINGIN’ POPE PITCHES BIG TENT
In a new documentary film that premiered last week, Pope Francis—the Vatican equivalent of the cool, laid-back college professor who lets you call him by his first name as he reeks of pot and maybe gets a little too touchy-feely, and in the end you realize you never actually learned a damn thing in his class—comes out staunchly in favor of civil unions for LGBTs. Yep, the pope’s all-in for gays gettin’ hitched! And to deliver that message he chose as his apostle a Jewish Israeli filmmaker, because at this point it’s literally all about daring conspiracy theorists to not take the bait.
Evgeny Afineevsky’s movie Francesco covers the pope’s newfound embrace of consecrated buttsex, as it chronicles the progressive pontiff’s campaign to push for the canonical acceptance and legal recognition of same-sex unions.
Funny enough, in his 2013 book On Heaven and Earth, Pope Permissive XXX claimed that laws “assimilating” gay relationships into marriage are “an anthropological regression,” adding that “if same-sex couples are given adoption rights, there could be affected children. Every person needs a male father and a female mother that can help them shape their identity.”
Look, science changes. One day Bill Nye is saying there are only two sexes, and the next he’s redacting his old work and admitting that “boy/girl” is just a social construct. By that same token, faith changes too. It’s not like the pope is supposed to be representing some kind of eternal, unchanging truth, right? Some kinda hifalutin “word of God,” right?
It’s not like he’s the pope or anything.
In an interview with EWTN News, filmmaker Afineevsky bragged that his friend the Holy Seesaw isn’t supposed to be “a leader to people in the sense of the Catholic Church, but in the sense of pure leadership, on the ground, on the streets.”
Yes, how ludicrous to expect a pope to be a leader of Catholics.
And while we’ll all suffer from the loss of “is the pope Catholic” as a rhetorical device, at least bears still shit in the woods.
Just as popes shit on doctrine.
BLACK DOCTORS AIN’T FOOLED BY NO GENOCIDAL WHITE VACCINE
In a perfect world, Emmett Till would have been part of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Such a serendipitous fusion of the two things black America will never shut up about would be the joining of chocolate and peanut butter into one delicious woke candy bar of whiteshaming.
And while the authors of a recent antiracist “study” published in The New England Journal of Medicine (which believe it or not used to actually cover medicine) were unable to find a way to work Mr. Till into their story, they certainly made some excellent hay from the unfortunate fate of the unwitting black syphilitic study subjects (a.k.a. the “Tuskegee Baudelairemen”).
“Trustworthiness Before Trust—Covid-19 Vaccine Trials and the Black Community” was penned by Rueben Warren, director of the Tuskegee University National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care, and David Augustin Hodge, associate director of the same institution (whose solo works can best be described as “massively convoluted gibberish,” and that’s being very generous). The other two authors are a couple of Harvard white dudes who probably spent their time on the study doing an impression of the speechless stick guy.
The gist of the “study” is that while whitey needs to “trust the science,” the black man don’t. The black duty to mistrust science is rooted in “centuries of well-documented examples of racist exploitation by American physicians and researchers”…although the authors can name only one actual example of such “racist exploitation”—you guessed it, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Therefore, because of these many (one) examples, the Tuskegee Mental Impairmen argue that blacks should not avail themselves of any Covid vaccines until white doctors have provided “convincing evidence” that the vaccines are not part of a racist plot.
Most importantly, the Tuskegee Nothing Going On Upstairmen stress that the white man’s vaccines are so risky, so likely to kill black people, that blacks should not partake of any Covid vaccine unless assurances are given that they will receive appropriate medical care if they are injured as a result. The authors call for “the pharmaceutical companies sponsoring these trials to establish a fund to guarantee health care coverage and death benefits to patients and families as compensation for serious vaccine injuries or possible deaths.”
You’ll never find any “vaxxers” being given a platform in The New England Journal of Medicine. But “blaxxers”? That’s another story. As long as you’re slamming vaccines to slam whitey, it’s totally cool to say that vaccines are risky. So risky, in fact, that a fund is needed to compensate patients and families for injury or death resulting from vaccinations.
This whole “uncritically accept everything a black person says and never impose even the mildest demand for rationality” thing is going great for science. Although the paper does leave one obvious question unanswered: If the white man’s medicine is so dangerous to blacks, weren’t the Tuskegee syphilitics better off without the penicillin?
ICE GRINDR
In the Terrance McNally play (and subsequent film) The Ritz, a man running from the Mob is forced to hide out in a gay bathhouse. The man is hetero, and, trapped in the refuge, he soon finds himself besieged on all sides by dudes trying to rape him.
It’s a comedy. And every bit as funny as it sounds.
The state of California, in conjunction with ICE, is currently producing a real-life version of The Ritz in the privately run immigration detention centers that dot the state. Apparently, those facilities have become hotbeds of hot, steamy, but not always consensual gay sex, according to a recent L.A. Times “exposé.”
Among the cases detailed in the report:
A detainee from South Korea named J. Lee (detained for overstaying his tourist visa) kept waking up each morning feeling like something wasn’t quite right. Chalking it up to kimchi withdrawal, Lee put it out of his mind, until one of his two cellmates confided in him that each night as he slept, the other cellmate had been slipping his hand down Lee’s pants and jerking his jaji.
Another detainee at a different facility was trailed into a bathroom by an inmate who fondled his buttocks and slapped his rear with his penis.
Yet another detainee at the same facility complained that every time he made a phone call to a family member, a persistent fellow inmate would grab and fondle his “member” as he spoke.
And poor Geovany Murillo, a “refugee” from Honduras. His 53-year-old cellmate would “watch him shower, masturbate in front of him, and slap his buttocks.” According to the prison, the cellmate was well-known in the facility for grabbing every genital he saw. It wasn’t just a hobby for this guy, but a passion.
All in all, the Times found a whopping 135 cases in California since 2017 of ICE detainees molested by other detainees. Amazingly, at no point in the lengthy piece did the Times bring up the fact that its own editorial board has pushed for the blanket emptying of these facilities. Had the paper mentioned that fascinating factoid, readers might have found themselves asking, “So it’s bad when these creeps commit sexual assault in detention centers, but it’s perfectly fine to release them so they can commit those same crimes in our neighborhoods?”
To which the Times would have surely answered, “Yes. Yes it is.” After all, as the paper points out, many of the detainees came here seeking amnesty on the grounds that they were persecuted in their home country for being LGBT. All that grabbing and groping and penis slapping is just them trying to be free. Like birds. Like rapey, dick-slappy birds.
Of course, there’s also the possibility, again unmentioned by the Times, that these detainees were being “persecuted” in their home countries for being rapists.
Even so, there might still be a place for these poor unfortunates on the outside, if only to fill the vacuum created by the “cancellation” of homegrown grabbers, gropers, and slappers like Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Toobin.
TRENTA REWARD FOR SHORT CUP O’ NOTHING
19-year-old Santee, Calif., native Alex Beckom is the hero of the day. The plucky and young (and fat ’n’ black) female Starbucks barista was serving a tall, thin white woman who was wearing a Trump 2020 Covid mask when the blonde dared to lower her mask to better communicate with Beckom.
A lowered mask? Truly a horror story worthy of the Halloween season.
When Beckom lectured the woman to pull her mask back up, the blondie responded, in a manner best described as “snippy” (though not overly aggressive), that she felt as though she was being singled out because of her mask’s message. While the two women remained fairly polite in their exchange, Beckom continued to needle the leggy cracker about the need to wear a mask. At which point the ofay devil took her coffee and, while still not raising her voice, brusquely responded with “Fuck you” and “Fuck Black Lives Matter” as she exited.
The customer was rude, to be sure. But she left quickly, and generally maintained an even tone throughout. The entire incident lasted a mere fifty seconds.
So of course Alex Beckom is being hailed as a hero for having “survived” a “loud assault” by a white woman. For literally just standing there as a white customer was snippy with her, Beckom has been lauded by the press, praised by Starbucks HQ, and awarded $25,000 in “reparations” via a GoFundMe campaign.
It’s tough being black in America. Beckom literally said that to The San Diego Union-Tribune as she wiped her ass with all the money she made from a fifty-second interaction.
Granted, the proper wearing of masks is Starbucks policy, and a customer cannot expect Starbucks to change its policies for the sake of one griping malcontent. Except when a black person who is not a customer wants to use the restroom, in which case Starbucks was totally forced to change its “restroom for customers only” policy in every single Starbucks on earth.
Perhaps the most important point is, where are the GoFundMes for the hundreds of white Americans who’ve been subjected to BLM terrorists angrily screaming directly in their faces at outdoor cafés and restaurants (sometimes with bullhorns)?
Alex Beckom got $20,000 (and counting) for standing still for fifty seconds as a white girl was rude in a nonaggressive way. If a stocky black chick secured safely behind plexiglass being told “Fuck BLM” by a rail-thin white girl who quickly exits the store is worth $25,000, one can only guess the proper compensation for those elderly whites at a Pittsburgh restaurant who were surrounded by young, aggressive, violent blacks screaming “Fuck white people” right in their ears.
Not that Beckom doesn’t deserve kudos for refusing to return rudeness with rudeness. But what’s the point of rewarding black people for doing the right thing if you don’t criticize them for doing the opposite?
Remember that time a bunch of black lunatics stormed a Starbucks and berated a white barista by screaming into a bullhorn held inches from his face? And the white guy just stood there stoically and peacefully, taking the abuse with dignity?
Remember how the press defended the aggressors and made it seem like the barista’s calm demeanor was a bad thing?
Do you think that Starbucks employee got $25,000 and a congratulatory call from corporate HQ?
Wanna guess?
NEW YORK—It’s nice to finally be in the Bagel, a place where the cows have two legs and no bells around their necks. I walk daily around the park that lies two blocks away from my house and stick to the Upper East Side in general. The park is by far the best part of Manhattan, and it’s better than ever because of you-know-what. Yes, the virus has chased away the tourists, and without tourists the rickshaws that had turned the park into a free-for-all have also gone missing. Central Park is the only part of the city that Bloomberg’s three-term despotism didn’t alter for the worse. Bloomberg was a so-so mayor but a lucky one. What followed makes him look like La Guardia (except Bloomberg is even shorter than Fiorello was) but doesn’t alter the fact that the billionaire sold out to developers and 40,000 condos and stores for the rich went up, wiping out traditional neighborhoods. But let’s give Bloomie a break, he spent close to a billion big ones trying to get nominated for president and carried American Samoa as a result. Bloomberg is now somewhere down south trying to dodge the virus and get Biden elected. (He’s pledged Biden $100 million and will get a cabinet or ambassadorial post as a result. I expect the midget will be in London next year.)
The enduring irony is that unlike the universal wish that our children surpass, outperform, and outlive us, bums like Bloomberg get a pass when their successors turn out to be even bigger bums. One thing is for sure—this place has emptied out of old Waspy types, true blondes, men in gray flannel suits, even fast-talking Hollywood types. Cultural torpor weighs the place down, relief coming only in the form of simplistic and misleading slogans in the media about race and sex. As the last tourist to get stuck here said, “Had I known, I would have stayed in Pago Pago.”
Where things have definitely improved is the number of shootings. From Jan. 1, 2020, until last Sunday two weeks ago, 1,204 shootings occurred, with 1,408 victims. The year before, the numbers were in the mid-hundreds. Other improvements have taken place downtown, where bands of shoplifters are terrorizing SoHo’s high-end boutiques and lifting zillions of dollars’ worth of designer merchandise. Louis Vuitton, Prada, Celine, Moncler, and so on are their targets. Celine alone was looted out of 1.5 million big ones. I think it’s the best advertisement for capitalism I know of. The high-end stores should follow Portland’s example and hire some of the perpetrators, paying them a large fee to advertise why they had to steal the stuff. “Man, ya f—in’ wear bling and the ho’s will ring…” I went down to the Village with Michael Mailer the other evening and it was a different world. I certainly didn’t fit in. Not that anyone bothered me. I dress in London and none of these gentlemen who hit and rob expensive boutiques are interested in my clothes. In fact they wouldn’t be caught dead in them. I found it very safe walking around downtown the other evening in a double-breasted Anderson & Sheppard gray flannel. People stared at me as if I was just let out from a loony bin. I think Mailer was embarrassed.
This is what it has come down to, a reverse cultural shift from restraint and elegance to garish vulgarity. If people can be brainwashed into buying ugly, expensive crap, or go as far as to excuse robbery because of systemic racism, it’s a hop-step-and-jump into swallowing the big lie that our society is one of brutal white male dominance and casual misogyny. Postmodernist thinkers without brains told us not so long ago that truth is not universal but malleable. It sure is. The truth I was brought up to believe in had nothing to do with systemic racism or brutal male dominance. My truths had to do with family structure, religion, and most of all, tradition. A fierce dedication to family and country is now considered anathema, like having good manners or wearing a suit. I enjoyed making a scene downtown for the first time ever. While drinking in an outdoor bar I noticed fashionable, righteous, virtue-signaling lefties. How? Easy. I was giving a very un-PC speech to Michael and they all fled as if I were a superspreader. It made my day. Night, rather.
Michael later described the moment as not exactly Proustian but as popular “as singing the ‘Horst Wessel’ in Tel Aviv circa 1948.” I blame it on the Spectator USA and an article by David Randall that exhorts us to “cease and resist.” “How to fight the tyranny of the illiberal left” should be required reading. Freddy Gray has assembled great columnists and writers, and I was following orders when I embarrassed limp-wristed Vogue types with my conservative views. The only trouble was that my buddy Michael Mailer is a lefty par excellence. (Poor boy took a lot of shots when he boxed—he was a top Golden Glover—and he also went to Harvard, an experience that has traumatized more people with high IQs than war, pestilence, and LSD ever did. If Plato had gone to Harvard he would have turned out a halfwit after one term.)
Yes, the pandemic has killed many people, but it’s bored to death even more. It’s time for an uprising against political correctness and the tyranny of the left.
